


Game Night

by cosmicaven



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Date Night, Implied Sexual Content, In Public, M/M, Prompt Fic, nothing too raunchy guys relax, trivia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-08
Updated: 2018-09-08
Packaged: 2019-07-08 14:52:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15932687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicaven/pseuds/cosmicaven
Summary: Most of Sherlock and Jim's time together is laced with danger and mystery, but what if for one night, they just went to the pub? (aka Jim's sneaky way to try and get into Sherlock's pants)





	Game Night

**Author's Note:**

> This is clearly a date night prompt fic, so without further ado, hope y'all enjoy!

**The Pool. Midnight. Three’s a crowd, don’t you think? -SH**

A shielded request not to involve any snipers or bomb jackets this time, Sherlock smirked and shut off his phone, knowing James would appreciate the attempt at conventional flirting-despite the fact that there was nothing really /conventional/ at all about their clandestine coupling. 

**Counter offer, sweetheart. The pub across the street. Chlorine’s so stifling, don’t you think? -JM xo**

James parroted the detective’s words back at him mockingly, but not without affection. Sherlock just rolled his eyes and replied with: 

**Fine. But you’re buying. -SH**

. . . 

“You look absolutely delectable in that scarf, Sherlock.” The detective felt a warm chest pressed against his back, light breaths at the nape of his neck that made him shiver lightly. 

“You’re being indecent, James,” Sherlock shifted away from the criminal and spins his chair to make eye contact with Moriarty, amusement glittering in his dark eyes. 

“Thought you like me when I’m naughty,” he murmured, leaning in so no one else could eavesdrop, as if they are sharing a dirty secret. Jim’s legs were spread almost obscenely, his polished, expensive shoes planted firmly on the floor of the bar. All Sherlock wanted was to move a little closer, crawl past the facades and unravel the criminal by the seams, only to build him back together again. 

He’s like a black hole, Sherlock mused. Pulling the detective into his vortex, swirling, spiraling until he forgets his inhibitions. _I’d fall into hell if I could shake hands with you on the other side, my love._ It’s foolish, it’s dangerous, it’s everything Sherlock loves and consumes it like the most potent drug. 

Telling by the way Jim’s face softened, he understood exactly what Sherlock was thinking. _That’s the thing about them,_ Jim thinks as he reads Sherlock’s face flawlessly—they see so much of themselves in the other person it’s hard to tell where Sherlock starts and James ends. 

James also thinks that he particularly likes that position in bed, but, alas- drinks before bed. The criminal keeps telling himself that, lest he get distracted, gazing at the tempting dip in Sherlock’s cupid’s bow. 

“My eyes are up here, James,” Sherlock tilted his head and smiled cheekily. Narcissist that he was, he picked up on Jim’s staring and was practically glowing with satisfaction. He does, though, indulge Jim with a feather-light kiss, reveling in the sparks that light just under his skin wherever the criminal touched him. 

Jim leaned into the detective’s kiss, humming with satisfaction despite the vague contempt at being so obvious. _Acknowledging feelings are quite useful when they lead to these results, though,_ he admitted slightly grudgingly, enjoying the feeling of being so close to Sherlock. 

. . . 

“Hey, d’you two wanna join in? There’s a pub quiz on tonight,” a lanky blonde man grinned lopsidedly at Sherlock and Jim, oblivious to the fact that they were otherwise occupied. Jim arranged his features into a pristine facade and smiled pleasantly at the man, nodding his assent and grabbed Sherlock’s hand, leading the lightweight detective over to where a crowd had formed in the middle of the pub. 

“What are you doing?” Sherlock muttered irritatingly, not appreciating his alone time with James being cut short so abruptly. “I don’t want to play those plebeian games with these horridly _ordinary_ people, you of all people should understand that.” 

Jim caressed his face lightly, not changing the pleasant expression he had given the blonde man, but added an amused smile. “It could be fun. Don’t knock it before you tried it,” he shrugged and walked to the other team, sitting besides a woman in her early 20’s. He immediately points at Sherlock and whispered something in the girl’s ear, and when she glanced his way, he sees a glint in her eye as she starts to laugh. Jim threw a condescending wink Sherlock’s way, and the detective’s blood positively boiled. 

Only James ever knew how to get underneath his skin like this, Sherlock admitted grudgingly, and it ignited equal feelings of excitement and contempt in him. He promised himself then to use all the brainpower currently available to him in his inebriated state to bring Jim’s team down. 

“And the games begin!” A bespectacled man at the head of the table, the Quizmaker, smiles and claps his hands. Sherlock gives him a few glances and quickly deduces that he’s in his late 20’s, struggling to kick an alcohol addiction, his wife and kid are waiting up for him so in retrospect he really shouldn’t be here- 

“What?” The man frowned, looking confused and upset now. Sherlock blinked, just now realizing he had said that all aloud, and sank back in his chair, running a hand over his face in frustration. Wonderful. Now the man would probably try and drunkenly fight him, or worse yet, start sobbing. Sherlock had had more than one unpleasant run-in with a person he had deduced, most of those encounters being during his years in university. Now that he had upset the Quizmaker, he doubted his team would have a fair chance. 

Jim, from the other side of the table, makes eye contact with the detective and smirked, casually leaning forwards in a way that seems innocent but actually allowed him to run a foot up the detective’s calf, leaving him red-face and far more flustered than his pride allowed for. 

The Quizmaker had started shouting at Sherlock, but he was tuning all of that out in favor for gazing at Jim’s Adam’s apple bob when he took a long, deep drink. The criminal gave him a wicked smile once he saw Sherlock staring, and that was when he realized Jim had put on that whole show for him. He involuntarily lets out a deep sigh and wonders how he’s going to get through this without losing his mind. 

“Can we just start the game, please?” A bored voice came out from Jim’s team, and the Quizmaker let out a shaky sigh, pushed his glasses up on his nose and picked up the first card. 

“This week’s theme is.. crime. We’ll be talking about one specific case, H. H. Holmes and his Murder Castle in America,” he finished, and turned the card to read the question on the opposite side. 

Sherlock’s jaw dropped, and Jim seemed to be holding back giggles. Of fucking _course,_ a serial killer with his last name. People in both teams began grumbling about the unfairness of the topic. How did he expect anyone to know about this obscure shit? they asked, but the consultants had no complaints. Of course, they each had extensive knowledge on H. H. Holmes, not that it would be a surprise to the other when they continued the game. 

At least the detective was intimately familiar with the stories, having been taunted with stories of the murder castle and people informing him throughout his life how ‘you’d end up like him one day, you freak.’ How wonderful, that had been. 

“H. H. Holmes was the name he went by, but what was his real name?” 

“Herman W. Mudgett!” Sherlock blurted out, and the blonde man from before made a remark about how that made no sense, it’s H. H. and not H. W.! The detective barely noticed, entranced by the almost imperceptible annoyance that flashed across Jim’s face. To the untrained eye, he looked like an average pub-goer, but Sherlock was anything but untrained, and Jim was anything but average. 

“H. H. Holmes became a pharmacist and replaced the job as owner of his pharmacy once the previous one died. What did he say about her whereabouts?” 

“She had moved out west,” James said, crossing his legs and lips twitching up when he received several pats on the backs from his teammates. Sherlock could practically hear the words Jim seemed to send him with his eyes. _I made it my business to learn from the masters, and do what I do better than they did._ Of course the criminal would study past crimes, or he wouldn’t do half as well as he did now. 

He found himself staring at James almost dreamily, and realized with a start that he might be far drunker than he had initially thought. He recoiled internally at the thought of staring dreamily at anyone, but conceded that James Moriarty was not absolutely anyone. 

_Oh well,_ Sherlock thought, knowing that the criminal would be just as aware of Sherlock if he wasn’t staring at Jim’s exposed collarbones, so decided to keep at it, throwing his pride down the drain in favor of admiring how delectable his better half looked in the dim pub lighting, reclining on his chair like he owned the building. 

Sherlock, for better or worse, was entranced. 

. . . 

Sherlock had to admit that it had been delightfully amusing, playing this dull game with these simple, average goldfish people, watching them gape and shout and carry on drunkenly throughout their game as they soon realized it was less of a team vs team as much as it was a Sherlock vs James competition. No doubt they showed up here together, their peers whispered, there’s no one else in the world like _them._

Loathe as it was to admit, the consultants had met their match. In each other, no less. It brought a quiet fire to Jim’s eyes that was reflected in the harsh, rude words Sherlock spitted out at everyone else, voice a bit louder than usual courtesy of one too many drinks. The detective was a show-off, and his emotions were brash and impulsive. James just stayed quiet and argued his points, which fueled Sherlock even more. 

It wasn’t meant to be a game to be argued, really; there were just facts and multiple choice answers. But of course the consultants knew far more about this particular subject than the people that had created this silly trivia game. So, after a few hours or so of bickering and shouting answers, they reached an all time high. Needless to say, because this was a situation where the two most brilliantly inane men in England were involved, it did not end prettily 

Jim was quietly seething on one side of the bar, despite being surrounded by his team members all of whom he had grown on through the night. They were all shouting praise, the words _bloody brilliant!_ and, _it’s almost as if he’s a criminal himself, the amount he knew about that Holmes bloke!_

Sherlock had smirked at that one, but his amusement quickly gave way to immature anger at everyone in the room’s inability to conceptualize little more than the simplest concepts that could possibly be given to them. Everyone in the room despite James, to be more precise, but Sherlock was angry with him for another reason. He was the only man capable of proving the detective _wrong._

. . . 

_“H.H. Holmes was not seen for five years after he left medical school. He eventually showed up in Wilmette, Illinois in 1885 posing as an inventor. Where was he and what was he doing during that time he was missing?”_

_“No one knows what he was doing,” Sherlock slammed his open palm down onto the wooden table, smirking when the Quizmaker nodded at their team and they began cheering as they had just won by a single point._

_“Hold on a moment,” James lifted a single hand in the air and quiet doused the room almost immediately. Those plebeians probably didn’t realize why such a nondescript man was having such an effect on them, Sherlock thought gleefully, and felt pride swell in his chest for the wonderfully clever criminal._

_That pride, though, was painfully short-lived. “He’s wrong!” James declared. He began explaining the corruption of the Pinkertons, and how shaky their reliability was; their claims should hardly be considered as fact, after all.. And, of course, the chief anatomy inspector at his university had been training him to lead the criminal life that he had lead, it was obvious when you read what his first ex-wife wrote—_

_Sherlock interrupted his lover before there’d be an all-out brawl over what a long dead criminal was doing for five years. “That’s what it says on the card, Jim, now let’s go,” he walked over to Jim in a few strides, grabbed his hand and pulled him up to stand. The criminal, though, resisted being dragged off, and when Sherlock turned to shoot an exasperated glare at Jim, his eyebrow raised in impatience as if asking, What the hell do you want? Jim just laughed quietly._

_He grinned wider at Sherlock, his annoyance clear as day on his face. James was thinking of something delightfully naughty, the detective knew it, and just hoped that he wouldn’t be pitted against the criminal as he so often was when his partner insisted on playing these games, constructing these dance routines for Sherlock to twirl through, so to speak._

_“Would you be up to debate, my love? Loser buys the entire winning team drinks, of course.” Sherlock just nodded, sighing and pulling his wallet out in advance. Jim was always so good at debating._

. . . 

That was where they had left off—the two geniuses unwilling to concede to defeat, their new mates had pushed them to opposite sides of the pub to stop Sherlock from strangling the _infuriating_ love of his life and do what they thought was protecting James from his better half. What they were actually doing, though, was sealing their fate with death. 

Jim had had enough of this, he wanted to pull off the mask and see Sherlock again. Wanted to keep debating with him, see the flush dance across his cheeks and his ears, but these idiots were blocking him like a goddamn human wall. 

“You can’t, my mum always says you have to let the man calm down before you go and try to reason with him,” the same woman that he had been whispering with earlier suddenly seemed a lot more obnoxious, though he conceded that she was probably correct. James didn’t give a fuck, though, so he pushed through the crowd of people over to the bar, where Sherlock sat. 

Sherlock opened his mouth, and Jim rolled his eyes, preparing for the snotty, pretentious voice that the detective put on when he was ready to prove that he was the smartest man in the room. He listened for a few moments before leaning up and pressing a heated, open-mouthed kiss on Sherlock’s lips. The detective stiffened up for a moment, emitting an offended “Mmph!”. 

He did, though, return the kiss, so as far as Jim was concerned, the situation had amended itself. Everyone in both of their teams began laughing, clapping each other on the backs and whistling when Jim not-so-subtly slid a hand down Sherlock’s spine and grabbed at his arse, clad in tight black trousers. They kept kissing and James kept groping Sherlock in a way that was most definitely inappropriate for a public setting. No one stopped them, as they were too busy laughing and enjoying themselves. 

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, they pulled away to gasp for air. Jim unweaved his fingers from Sherlock’s ruffled curls and reached into his jacket pocket, coming away with his wallet. 

“Drinks for everyone that played with us,” Jim gave an all too pleased smile at Sherlock before handing the money to the bartender. The criminal pulled Sherlock out of the pub quickly, almost stumbling over an incline in the sidewalk in his eagerness to get to his car. Sherlock frowned in confusion, turning to the criminal and asking: 

“Why’d you—” Jim shook his head and silenced Sherlock with a long kiss, murmuring something against his lips that sounded like _hot when arguing._

“Are you serious?” The detective grinned with amusement, and let himself be shoved into the shotgun, watching James fumble with the keys before cursing in frustration and picking up his phone. Uber was safer than driving when drunk, he informed the criminal matter-of-fact, only to be met with a scowl. 

“I’ve half a mind to push you down on this dirty sidewalk and give you something else to do with that smart mouth,” Jim stated slowly, staring at Sherlock, his eyes dark with desire. 

“Why don’t you?” Sherlock taunted, and Jim gave him a wicked grin.

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me @cloudheist on Tumblr and @dynamicwritin on Twitter! I post a lot abt these dumbasses and I want new friends. + as always, comment and leave kudos if u want me to post more, it really really means a lot.


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